Mexico: Newspaper Discusses the "Mérida Martian"

** Strange "creature" reported ***
** Residents of Oriente fear going out at night and are avoiding a prowler ***
by William Casanova Vazquez

The casual recording of an alleged close encounter of the third kind in a street of Fraccionamiento del Parque has transformed the lives of families in Merida's broad Oriente sector, who on the one hand seek financial gain from the arrival of national and international groups linked with extraterrestrial research and on the other, have modified their lives to avoid becoming the victims of alien beings.

"Now I shut my doors at nine at night and do not let my children go out after hours for any reason whatsoever," said a fearful Marycarmen Avila Ordonez, who lives in Pacabtun.

Cristo Rey parish, the axis of this district's spiritual life, says that it has no reports on this event and that if there are any, they have not affected the religious life of that community. "We always receive reports of strange events immediately, such as the apparition of the Virgin some 8 years ago, but we have no reports of encounters between residents and aliens," said Carmen Zel Chuc, parish secretary.

The event became widely known when the recording reached the hands of Jaime Maussan, who broadcast it on his television show. The recording spread immediately from cell phone to cell phone, over the Internet, and as no other, went on to become the most widely transmitted throughout the Yucatan, relegating to second place the recording made by a young sales assistant at a downtown department store, who stripped naked for her boyfriend in front of the camera phone...a recording he chose to disseminate over the internet.

The video's main protagonist is David Espadas Dzib, 18, a computer student at Conalep and having residence at [...] in that district.

The young man says that on the eve of the spring equinox at 2:30 a.m. on March 20th, he was playing with his friends only a few steps away from his house when the ball fell near a street lamp.

One of the boys, Jose Herrera, was trying out his new camcorder-equipped cell phone that day.

At the moment when the ball falls near the CFE street lamp and David runs to pick it up, he shouts that something touched him. His friends rush to his aid and at that time an unknown silhouette peers out from behind the street lamp. The boys run away screaming.

"It wasn't until the next day that we checked out José's recording and saw that I was touched by a strange creature. We agreed to say nothing because we would be accused of being insane or pranksters. The fear didn't let me sleep for two days and my crew didn't return to that alley for two months," says David.

His neighbor Wendy Lopez Manzanero says that when she learned of the recording, she decided to never walk along that alley again.

"I didn't believe in those things, but the boys that suffered that strange experience are very sincere," says Carmen Dehesa Uribe, a local who claims to be the niece of author German Dehesa.Her niece Naine Peraza Solis says she's afraid to play with her friends at night.

Frightened neighbors aside, the young men involved in this event first suffered the mockery of other boys and some neighbors, and later, the disenchantment of being famous without any profit.

"Will we get something in exchange for the interview? Jaime Maussan asked me not to grant interviews without his permission. Everyone's getting rich at my expense--sensationalist magazines, radio and TV shows, and I haven't gotten a single peso," complains David.

He points out that when the video displaying the alleged encounter passed through the first inspections by specialists in ufology, Maussan promised him part of the earnings from the sale of the recording to a Japanese TV network. He took him to hold lectures and conferences on the subject. "All I've gotten is laughed at."

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